Spock and Tormolen wear shower curtains while examining a department store mannequin. The episode gets better.
UPDATE May 8, 2025 — Christopher L. Bennett in this column's comments points us to an April 2023 FactTrek.com blog article exploring the writing history behind “The Naked Time.” Click here to read the excellent column by Michael Kmet and Maurice Molyneaux.
John D.F. Black was a 33-year old established television writer when he won an award in March 1966 from the Writers Guild of America (WGA) for his Mr. Novak episode, “With a Hammer in His Hand, Lord, Lord!” Mr. Novak was a series about an idealistic English teacher at a Los Angeles high school. The episode's plot was about Novak trying to learn the identity of three students who had roughed up another teacher.
Black's award was in the category of Dramatic-Episodic. That same night, speculative fiction writer Harlan Ellison won an award in the Anthology category for his Outer Limits episode, “Demon with a Glass Hand.”
Most Star Trek fans are well aware of Ellison's future connection to the original series, credited as the writer of “City on the Edge of Forever.” We'll revisit that controversial episode in a future column.
John D.F. Black, however, is known only to the most hardcore of Star Trek fans.
At the WGA award party, Gene Roddenberry approached Black about coming to work for him on Star Trek. Black was unfamiliar with science fiction, but became both an associate producer and story consultant, balancing those duties with Bob Justman. In his memoir Inside Star Trek: The Real Story, Justman wrote that Roddenberry decided Black needed to loosen up, so Gene played a practical joke on him. This was in late April 1966, when Star Trek was still in pre-production. Roddenberry recruited his paramour Majel Barrett to attempt seducing Black.
If you've read the earlier columns, you know that Barrett was dropped from the series after the first pilot, “The Cage.” Roddenberry schemed to hire her for the series anyway in a different role. Gene asked John to interview Barrett for possible employment. Roddenberry and other staff members burst in on them as Majel sat on John's lap and began to undo her blouse buttons.
Justman and his co-author Herb Solow wrote that Black struggled to write his first script, “The Naked Time,” while juggling that with his story consultant responsibilities reviewing other submitted scripts.
In These are the Voyages by Marc Cushman, Black recalled that he took offense to Roddenberry rewriting his first draft. According to Black, the WGA rules at the time prohibited a producer from rewriting a script until after the writer submitted a second draft. He said he had a verbal agreement with Roddenberry that his scripts would not be touched until after he'd written two drafts and a polish. Black objected to Roddenberry not only rewriting his drafts but those of other free-lance writers. Black's secretary (and future wife) believed that Roddenberry was drunk while rewriting John's first draft, due to the sloppiness of the written notes and his slurring voice on a Dictaphone recording.
Roddenberry's defense was that he had a unique vision for the show and its characters. The show needed to maintain a schedule; he couldn't afford to wait for his writers to perfect a script, because he needed those scripts to go into pre-production.
According to Cushman, some of Gene's changes added “ham-fisted changes in dialogue, but there are also many positive additions to the script.” Black created an assistant for Doctor McCoy named Nurse Ducheau. Roddenberry changed the character's name to Christine Chapel, intending to cast Majel Barrett in the role with a hair color change to blonde. In this episode, she's only called (and credited as) “Christine.”
Black eventually left the show mid-way through production of the first season. In a 2001 interview, Black said that what he liked most about this script was the lack of a villain. In that sense, it compares somewhat to the fourth Star Trek film, The Voyage Home. The threat there was an alien probe looking to communicate with extinct humpback whales.
Cushman also wrote about another time pressure, lining up a director for the episode. By May 1966, Roddenberry had hired nine directors for the first nine episodes. Bernard Kowalsky was slotted to direct “The Naked Time” but was already booked on another show. Unable to find another director, Roddenberry recruited Marc Daniels, who was to direct the preceding episode, “The Man Trap.” When filming of that episode ended three hours early, Daniels immediately began filming “The Naked Time” with the actors already on the set.
The premise of the episode doesn't fit any of the ideas in Roddenberry's March 11, 1964 sixteen-page concept outline used to pitch the show to the networks. It appears that the original premise came from Black.
Up to this point, the episodes had been captain-centric. You'll recall that Roddenberry's original premise was that each episode was to be a recollection of an adventure as told by the captain. The lead character can carry the show only so far, so “The Naked Time” was an opportunity to flesh out the supporting cast of characters.
The writer's tool for this episode is not unique. Each character, due to what's called in the biz a MacGuffin, is stripped down to his or her base emotions. Because the characters are trapped on the starship, these base emotions are going to collide.
For a budget-conscious show, this is known as a “bottle episode” meaning most or all scenes are filmed on existing sets with already contracted actors. In this case, our starship is metaphorically the ship-in-a-bottle. We've discussed in prior columns how Desilu and NBC closely scrutinized production of Star Trek, believing that a science fiction show couldn't stay within budget.
One has to give credit to the cast for selling some truly cheap props. Spock examines a frozen corpse that's clearly a department store mannequin. Their hazmat suits were cut from a shower curtain pattern.
Star Trek's strengths were its cast and its writers. “The Naked Time” has some truly dumb moments, especially in the teaser, but it's one of fandom's most popular episodes.
So let's dive in.
The Enterprise has been dispatched to recover a scientific party from a frozen world in its death throes. We're shown stock footage from … somewhere. Spock and Lt. J.G. Joe Tormolen beam down in hideous hazmat suits that are clearly ineffective because the headgear doesn't even attach to the rest of the suit. Tormolen can reach under and scratch his nose, which maу explain why he's only a J.G. The hazmat suits were made out of shower curtains, according to Marc Cushman.
All the members of the science team are dead. The frozen female is portrayed by a department store manneuqin. Leonard Nimoy and Stewart Moss sell it as best they can. Director Marc Daniels doesn't even bother to find a camera angle concealing the mannequin's face. One has to wonder if he was sending a message.
Tormolen removes his glove to scratch his nose, so we're assured he will get what he deserves. Particularly disrespectful is his placing the glove atop the head of the frozen console operator.
He places his exposed hand on the console. We see an animated red liquid jump onto his hand. That couldn't have been cheap in an otherwise cheaply produced episode, so kudos for that.
Dumbass then sticks the exposed hand under his face mask to smell it. Tormolen really deserves to die. Spock re-enters the room and warns Tormolen not to expose himself. So to speak.
Lt. J.G. Joe Tormolen, an early candidate for the 2266 Darwin Awards.
On his wrist communicator (a predecessor of the ones used in Star Trek: The Motion Picture?), Spock tells Kirk, “It's like nothing we've dealt with before.” According to Cushman, this is one of the “ham-fisted” lines added by Roddenberry to Black's script.
Thus concludes one of the more embarrassing teasers in the original series.
Spock and Tormolen beam up. Scotty activates a decontamination beam — just the lights flashing — which should have removed the contamination. If it did, we'd have no story.
Kirk orders the landing party to “Medicine.” (Formerly called Dispensary, also Sickbay.) McCoy's scans find nothing. Bones comments derisively about Spock's green blood, an early effort by the writing staff to create the banter between the two that will become a show staple. Kirk orders Spock to study the “tapes” recording during the away mission — a choice of words reflective of its time.
Majel Barrett makes her first appearance as Nurse Chapel. Bones calls her “Christine.” So that name is established.
The “tapes” show nothing, but Spock notes that the instruments would only show what they're designed to register.
Kirk says that “Earth science” needs a close-up measurement of the planet's death. The terms “Federation” and “Starfleet” still have yet to be introduced.
An obviously unwell Tormolen goes to the rec room for a meal. Sulu and Riley (his first appearance) enter. Riley says that Sulu was trying to interest him in botany, a callback to the prior episode, “The Man Trap,” in which Sulu maintained a botany lab. In the second pilot, Sulu was an astrophysicist. Tormolen pulls a table knife on Sulu, then stabs himself with it. The infection transfers to Sulu and Riley.
The second act begins with Sulu at the helm and Riley at navigation. Both are scratching their infected hands. Not a good place for them to be.
In any case, we can see that this is going to spread through the ship, so not much sense going into detail.
Tormolen dies, becoming the fifth crew member to die on screen. (Four died in “The Man Trap.”) We've yet to lose a redshirt. Chapel says to McCoy, “He's dead, doctor.” In future episodes, Bones is the one delivering that line.
After Spock relieves Riley of duty, he assigns Uhura to navigation. This is the second straight episode where we see Uhura at a post other than communications. Later in the episode, Uhura takes command of the bridge. But in future episodes, Uhura's role is diminished to opening hailing frequencies, one reason why Nichelle Nichols almost left the show. Later in the episode, Janice Rand takes the helm, giving Grace Lee Whitney's character a more prominent role.
Spock nerve-pinches Sulu, the second time we see Spock use the grip. George Takei sells it by collapsing to the floor as if he'd been turned off, but also credit Leonard Nimoy for the casual way he applies the pinch as if it's barely an effort. Kirk comments, “I'd like you to teach me that sometime.”
Riley sabotages engineering, introducing yet another writer's staple — a countdown. Spock informs us that the Enterprise has less than 20 minutes before the ship spirals into the atmosphere. Our characters will collide with one another as the clock ticks.
Scotty labors in a Jeffries Tube, trying to cut off Riley's control of engineering. This is the first time we see a Jeffries Tube, named after the show's production designer Matt Jeffries.
On his way to assist Scott, Spock encounters a crewman with a paint brush who has written LOVE MANKIND on a corridor wall. In an early draft, Black wrote that the crewman painted a mustache on Spock's face, causing the Vulcan to burst into tears. (How the crewman got Spock to hold still that long is unexplained …) In his memoir I Am Spock, Leonard Nimoy wrote that this scene was “a pointless exercise in stripping the dignity from him — and it also contradicted everything I knew about him.” Nimoy asked Black to rewrite the scene, but Black said there wasn't time. Nimoy then went to Roddenberry, who had Black rewrite the scene the way Leonard wanted.
The prequel series Star Trek: Strange New Worlds contradicts the Spock-Chapel relationship defined by this episode.
In the revision, Christine takes Spock's hand and expresses her love for him, transferring the virus. (In Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, the Spock-Chapel romance is quite robust, contradicting what was established in this episode.) With time for only one take, Nimoy gives a performance that defines the character for all eternity. Finding an empty briefing room, Spock breaks down and weeps in private. Nimoy's fan mail skyrocketed after this episode, which also gave him the leverage to demand more from the production and the studio.
Spock's intermix formula implodes the engines, causing the Enterprise to travel backwards in time. An early concept was that this was to be the jumping-off point for what eventually became “Tomorrow is Yesterday,” when the ship found itself above the 1960s United States. The two-parter idea was abandoned, but the episode would be produced later in the first season. The Enterprise regressed 71 hours, suggesting the crew could have observed themselves in orbit around Psi 2000, but Kirk decides to proceed to their next assignment.
Roddenberry recycled “The Naked Time” for Star Trek: The Next Generation, in an episode called “The Naked Now.” The Enterprise-D encountered a similar virus and symptoms. John D.F. Black was given a partial writing credit for that episode. D.C. Fontana rewrote that script at Roddenberry's direction, but he rewrote her draft, inserting sexually charged scenes. The android Data was inexplicably affected by the virus. Fontana had her name removed, replaced by a pseudonym, J. Michael Bingham.
Fun fact … As the Enterprise plunges deeper into the atmosphere, the planet appears to be spinning faster. This would have been consistent with orbital mechanics. The closer an object is to a gravitational source, the faster must be its velocity to equal the gravitational pull and remain in orbit. The International Space Station, for example, orbits Earth at an altitude of about 250 miles. It must maintain a velocity of about 17,500 miles per hour to avoid falling back into the atmosphere. Geosynchronous satellites, which orbit at an altitude of about 22,000 miles, travel at a velocity of about 7,000 miles per hour.
Sources:
“Writers Guild Honors 18 Members for Work,” Los Angeles Times, March 25, 1966, Part V, Page 12.
John D.F. Black Interview, Part 1, StarTrek.com, 2001.
John D.F. Black Interview, Part 2, StarTrek.com, 2001.
Mark Cushman, These are the Voyages: TOS Season One (San Diego: Jacobs/Brown Press, 2013).